Arts & Culture

Alison Brie Talks About ‘Community’s’ Fresh Start

Fans of Community rejoiced last night as the fifth season premiered on NBC. After a rocky fourth season, the show is back, and the cast is ready to reclaim Greendale Community College. 31-year-old Alison Brie, who stars in the show as perfectionist and former Adderall addict, Annie Edison, recently spoke with The Daily Beast about the return of Dan Harmon, her time formerly employed as a clown, and pre-gaming with her costars.

Some teasers from the interview:

So, Community is back. I saw the first few episodes, and it seems like the show has its mojo back. What was the first day of filming with Dan like? Was there a team-bonding night?

We like to pre-game, so the cast had gotten together with Dan and Chris McKenna, our other new-old showrunner, beforehand to—not hash everything out—but have a fun night where we addressed everything that needed to be addressed, and to more get ourselves pumped up for work. So by the time we started filming, it felt like the same-old. The energy all-round on set was better, and real positive.

Back to the pre-game party. What are we talking about here? Flip cup? Karaoke? How does the Community cast get down?

[Laughs] It’s usually in the back room of some place, and it’s mostly just drinking and a lot of jokes.

What was the worst experience you had as a clown? Any Damien-like kids?

The kids were not so bad! Honestly, the worst part—and again, it goes back to the Power Puff Girls—was being ogled by strange dads. That was weird. It’s like, “I have a huge head on! You don’t even know what I look like, so stop looking up my skirt!”

As far as Dan’s exit goes, and his dicey relationship with Chevy Chase, did you ever witness any of that hostility between them on set? And was it the sense of the entire cast that it was getting to be too much, and a change needed to be made?

Honestly, I don’t really have much of a take on it. I think it gets really blown out of proportion in the media. I don’t think Dan leaving was definitively something that had to do with Chevy, nor does Chevy leaving definitively have to do with Dan coming back. These were network-level decisions that were in a totally different realm outside of my working knowledge, but in the media, everyone wants to play it up like it’s this rivalry. And I wasn’t at the wrap party that year when some of that infamous stuff went down.